


Around the Block and Back

by tjs_whatnot



Series: Drunken Shenanigans and The Stories It Tells [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Mentor/Protégé, and how they work, dodgy understanding of Star Wars spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 16:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11924673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjs_whatnot/pseuds/tjs_whatnot
Summary: Poe sneaks young Ben out for a ride...





	Around the Block and Back

**Author's Note:**

> Written from Lady of Leithian's prompt.
> 
> I'm not really sure in canon of the age difference between these two, so forgive me if I've erred drastically.

Poe looked down at the boy walking beside him, his helmet about 12 sizes too large on the boy’s head. The weight of it causing the boy to wobble a bit, fighting to regain his balance. Poe smiled. He was breaking about a million rules bringing the kid up in his fighter, but he reasoned it was worth it. Anything to get the kid to stop bugging him about it every single minute of every single day. 

As he lifted him into the co-pilot’s seat, he scanned the lander to make sure none of his instructors-- or god forbid, the boy’s mother, The General--were lurking. He shivered at the thought of General Organa’s wrath were she to discover that he was taking her seven year old son up in a X-fighter while he’s still not a full-fledged pilot himself. He can almost see the glare, the way she would be studying him down the length of her nose, giving the impression of towering over him even though, in reality they’re very close to the same height, and he still has a few more inches to go before he’s done growing.

“You buckled up, kid?” Poe asked.

The boy mumbled his response, the helmet bobbing as he shook his head. 

“I can’t understand a word you are saying with that thing covering your face,” Poe said with a chuckle.

The boy lifted his visor and spoke again, “Yes, I am ready.”

Poe was about to tell him to lower the visor back down as it didn’t protect as well when it’s up, but then thought better of it. It was already a moot point. A helmet that ill fitting wasn’t going to do much good if they were actually in any crash. They were both going to be dead. The boy from the crash; Poe from the wrath of the boy’s parents.

Again he reconsidered doing something this dumb. Taking a deep breath, he started the engine. _Too far gone now_ , he thought. _Just around the block and back._

He radioed into the tower that he was taking the fighter out for training maneuvers, and then he turned off the comm so that they wouldn’t be able to hear anything in the plane. “Alright, kid, let’s go.” Then, as they glided out of the hangar, he described in great detail all the things he was doing as he did it. They boy listened intently. Poe couldn’t almost see the notes the boy was taking in his head.

“Where to, kid?”

“Why do you always call me kid?" 

“So I can try to forget who your parents are, who your uncle is and how very dead I would be if they saw you here.”

“How’s that working for you?”

Poe laughed. “Not well at all, Ben.”

“Well don’t worry. My father is out of town on business, my uncle would appreciate the rebellion of it and go on and on with stories of his own rule-breaking youth and my mother, well, you’re one of her favorites, she’ll cut you slack.”

Poe wasn’t sure if Ben was underestimating his mother’s devotion to her son or overestimating her admiration of him. Yes, she was oddly fond of him--not that odd after Poe had met Han Solo and he witnessed that the same exacerbated look of admiration that she sometimes gave Poe had been perfected on Han. 

She definitely had a _type_. And like Poe imagined it did for Han himself, having General Organa on his side, made him strive to be the very best he could be, to be worthy of her admiration. It didn’t help him in times like these however, and he swallowed the fear of disappointing her.

“What does this do?” Ben asked, pointing to the weapon’s stick and it’s red illuminated light.

“Nothing you need to worry about for a long time,” Poe answered.

“I want to be the best pilot there has ever been,” Ben announced and Poe can just imagine his little chest puffed out with his childish and wholesome bravado.

“Well, that’s a good goal to have, you have some big shoes to fill. Your dad and uncle are two of the best self-taught pilots that have ever been in the Rebellion.”

“And my grandfather was the best Jedi-trained pilot.”

“Your grandfather?” Poe asked, his skin crawling in that way that it had done from time to time when Ben had said or done something that could be interpreted as coming from his grandfather. Poe knew who he was, had heard the stories. He just didn’t know how much young Ben knew. How much he should know.

“Uncle Luke tells me about him, tells me about the Jedi he was before he went to the Dark Side and the Sith Lord he became after.”

“Why?” Poe asked before he was sure he’d meant to.

“He wants me to know my history, where I came from, what I am capable of. He said many of the mistakes he’d made, most of the heartbreak he’d suffered was not knowing who he was, where he came from.”

“And your mother?” Poe asked, chastising himself. He should have changed the subject, these are things he shouldn’t know. He’s still a student, not a soldier, not a confidante to the Skywalker or Solo family.

“She’s different. She’s always known who she is, a Princess, a warrior a soldier. She was raised as a daughter in the Organa family, not a nephew to people who had no interest instilling any sense of family in their charge.”

“So, Luke has told you all about Darth Vader?”

“Not everything. He doesn’t know everything. But what he didn’t tell me, I found out by accessing the files on the data-coms.”

“How old are you again?” Poe asked. 

Ben giggled and Poe sighed. It is a very satisfyingly childish sound. “I’m seven, but my mother uses the world _precocious_ a lot.”

“That’s a good word for it,” Poe remarked. He turned the plane back towards home, ready to unload the tiring responsibility of his young charge. 

“One day I’m going to be trained to push that red button, to blow things up, to fight the bad guys.”

“Yeah?” Poe said, hoping but not voicing his desire that by the time Ben was old enough for the responsibility of war, there would be no more fighting, no more Empire. He imagined, though, that his parents had wished the same. “I will hope to be fighting right beside you.”


End file.
